By Matthew Dove
Wells Fargo have had quite a month. First the triumphant announcement that they’d helped secure $17 million in Series C from major banks and leading fintech investors for OpenFin, a financial operating system. Then, another unceremonious shellacking from their number one fan Elisabeth Warren in the Senate.
The funding round was led by Wells Fargo with participation from Barclays and existing investors including Bain Capital Ventures, J.P. Morgan and Pivot Investment Partners. The Series C round brings OpenFin’s total amount of venture funding to $40 million. Proceeds from the financing will be used to make OpenFin OS ubiquitous on financial desktops and to fund further product innovation.
“Apple and Google’s mobile operating systems and app stores have enabled more than a million apps that have fundamentally changed how we live,” said Mazy Dar, CEO and Co-Founder of OpenFin. “OpenFin OS and our new app store services enable the next generation of desktop apps that are transforming how we work in financial services.”
During a Senate Banking Committee hearing in 2017, Warren implied that former Wells CEO Timothy Sloan was either incompetent or complicit in the 2016 fake account scandal and should be fired.
OpenFin OS has become a de facto market standard for deployment and interoperability of desktop apps to power digital transformation across the industry. Its customers include most major banks, leading asset management firms and many of the best known vendor platforms in the space.
Whilst the good times role for Barclays, OpenFin and Wells Fargo, senators like Warren are keen to make sure the public get both sides of the story. During a Senate Banking Committee hearing in 2017, Warren implied that former Wells CEO Timothy Sloan was either incompetent or complicit in the 2016 fake account scandal and should be fired. He later left the bank under a cloud of suspicion and a chorus of cheers, Warren herself tweeting at the time;
The U.S. Federal Reserve have since imposed a growth cap on Wells Fargo following the exposure of widespread vagaries in the sales practices of multiple divisions of the bank. The scams Warren alluded to in her Tweet included a scandal whereby millions of fake accounts were opened without customers’ knowledge.
The latest duel between Warren and Wells featured questions over Joseph Otting’s refusal to publicly reveal the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s (OCC) evaluation of the next Wells Fargo CEO. The episode leaves unanswered questions regarding corporate transparency and accountability as well as the willingness of government officials to address them.
TFT asked OpenFin how important transparency and accountability are when dealing with its investors and partner banks. No response there came…
